Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure, for example, relates to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to throughput estimation in a wireless local area network.
Description of Related Art
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access points, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple mobile devices. Access points may communicate with mobile devices on downstream and upstream links, and each access point has a coverage range.
For example, a wireless network, for example a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), such as a Wi-Fi network (IEEE 802.11) may include an access point (AP) that may communicate with one or more stations (STAs) or mobile devices. The AP may be coupled to a network, such as the Internet, and enable a mobile device to communicate via the network (and/or communicate with other devices coupled to the access point).
Throughput estimation may be used to determine whether a STA should use a particular AP. However, existing methods of estimating throughput are somewhat inaccurate because they may rely on channel utilization parameters, for example. Using channel utilization as a parameter for throughput estimation may lead to a misleading estimation because such estimation may not truly reflect the utilization a new STA joining the network may obtain.